TV AND ME ARE THROUGH (AGAIN)

My general philosophy on TV is that it's only for when you are too fried or sick for anything else. I have Netflix for the really good shows (mostly HBO and BBC), which is hella cheaper than cable, plus it has anime, foreign flicks, kung fu, psychotronic, etc. without any editing for television, not to mention I can watch whenever I want. I refuse to pay month after month for cable, Tivo, dish, etc., when 99% of the content is crappy. I rarely even tape something, since that implies televison has some kind of power over me.

Every couple of years, though, they come up with a show I actually get hooked on, but it either gets bad or cancelled: Twin Peaks, Popular, Freaks & Geeks, Angel, Arrested Development, Law & Order in its prime. For a while there were actually 2 shows I might consider taping, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. Now they are both gone. Well, I guess I'll have more time for the Internet.

As far as network TV goes, the only good shows left are The Office and 30 Rock, but with sitcoms I don't feel the same urgency; I can wait to catch it again in re-runs or on DVD. I'm afraid The Office may jump the shark next season if Jim & Pam get together, and 30 Rock can be a little too-quirky-for-its-own-good.

Unfortunately, like radio, TV isn't driven by what people who are real fans love, but by what people who don't really care can tolerate being on in the background. At least we have DVD's now, so even the most short-lived show can be immortalized (I didn't see Firefly until it came out on DVD). Dare I hope that pre-DVD cult shows like Quark and The Associates will someday be available?

LOVE SONGS THAT DON'T SUCK





So anyway, I was invited to my brother-in-law's sister's wedding, which I didn't go to because I don't really know her, but they asked for us to send lists or mix CD's of their favorite love songs, which is a really cool idea (plus, I can't resist an excuse to make a mix CD, I'm as bad as that guy in High Fidelity).

Despite the cliché that all pop songs are about love, it's surprisingly hard to
find a song that is actually about being in love, as opposed to infatuation, lust or heartbreak. I guess it's hard to write one without falling into the horrifyingly schmaltzy territory of Three Time a Lady or I Will Always Love You. Luckily, I had already created a similar mix CD for my dear Dr. S.

Here is my list. It's interesting that all of the songs are less than 5 minutes long, and half of them are less than 3 minutes. I guess if you actually capture that feeling, you want to stop before you wreck it.


Love/Cinerama
Someone I Care About/The Modern Lovers
Gorilla/Rubinoos
I Think We're Alone Now/Lene Lovich
Green Eyes/Husker Du
Need You Around /Smoking Popes
When My Baby's Beside Me/Big Star
Crazy/Silverfish
Fragile/Wire
I Second That Emotion/Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
This Can't Be Love/Count Basie & Joe Williams
Straight To You/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Only You/The Flying Pickets
A Natural Kind of Joy/That Petrol Emotion
More Than This/Roxy Music
My Funny Valentine/Elvis Costello
Cast A Shadow/Beat Happening
Gigantic/The Pixies
I'll Be Your Mirror/The Velvet Underground
You're So Good To Me/Langley Schools Music Project
Wicked Little Town /Hedwig & The Angry Inch
Maps/Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Love You More/The Buzzcocks
No Matter What/Badfinger
The More I See You/Dick Haymes
Everlasting Love/Carl Carlton

purgeofdissidents
Originally uploaded by ash966.

Dr. S and I went to the Toomer Gallery at Soovac, which seems to be becoming the hot new gallery since the demise of Ox-Op, last Saturday to catch the Dalek/Haze XXL show.
Haze XXL is Tom Hazelmyer, the guy behind Ox-Op, Amphetamine Reptile Records, and the great Halo of Flies*. The show combined cartoons of Dalek's "space monkeys" with Haze's instrumental music, which reminded us of Helios Creed or Neu! Pretty cool, but I was saddened to hear that one track on the associated CD featured my nemesis, Craig Finn of the Hold Steady. Damn you, Hazelmyer! Are you drinking the Kool-aid too? Anyway, anyone going to a Melvins show this fall will be able to see A Purge of Dissidents as the opener.

*Gemm says my "Death of a Fly" 7" is worth 40$!

Update to my previous entry:

Freemap.com made the Daily Sucker!

MY WEB SITE IS LAME


Why, oh why is it so hard to create a web site that doesn't make me want to rip my eyeballs out every time I see it? Am I just too sensitive? Myspace pages make me want to rip my eyeballs out, then fill the holes with concrete just in case someone invents a futuristic vision device like the one Geordi La Forge had in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I know it doesn't matter because it's all about Web 2.0 now and nobody reads web pages anyway, but all I want is a page that serves as a framework for my main Web 2.0 sites and looks nice. Is that so wrong? I've tried Yahoo! Geocities, Angelfire, and Googlepages, and now I'm trying an iWeb site hosted on .Mac. It looks good in Safari and Foxfire (PC & Mac), but that evil Internet Explorer is making it look bad.

Now, I know none of you would use IE willingly, but are usually forced to in the workplace, so I apologize if it looks bad. You can still find my main stuff here on Odd Obsession and here:

http://del.icio.us/ash966/ash966ontheweb

Well, at least my web site isn't as bad as this one:

http://www.freemap.com/

These are nice people, I'm sure, and I used to buy maps from them when they had a brick-&-mortar store in downtown St. Paul, but this site is just horrifying: a bunch of cells of all different sizes, left-right scrolling, animated globes, and no clues to navigation whatsoever, just a bunch of things stuck randomly on a page. I think I'll submit it to Web Pages That Suck.